Teachers reflect on a year of Covid: students struggling, others thriving edsource.org - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from edsource.org Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
Link copied.New law would help students who fell behind academically during pandemic
California may make it easier for parents to request that their children be held back a grade level next school year or have letter grades earned this school year changed to a “pass” or “don’t pass” score, which some colleges will be required to accept if Assembly Bill 104 becomes law.
The bill was introduced today by Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez, D-San Diego, as a way to ensure that students aren’t punished for falling behind academically during the pandemic.
“The outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic has exacerbated educational inequities in California’s school system at an unprecedented scale,” said Gonzalez in her author’s statement. “Mounting evidence indicates that our most vulnerable students lack the necessary academic, social emotional, and technological supports needed to be successful in distance learning, leaving them to fall behind and underperform.”
Even in the most frustrating, hopeless, boring, grief-filled days of the pandemic, California families found slivers of joy.
In Los Banos, the Ruiz and Gutierrez family played indoor badminton and learned American Sign Language together. In the Lucerne Valley, 8-year-old Colton Reichow careened over the desert hills on his dirt bike and learned how to butcher a cow at his grandfather’s farm. In Los Angeles, Shari Abercrombie found a way to make math fun for her son with special needs.
And just about everyone in EdSource’s families project rediscovered the simple comfort of talking to each other. In the third installment of our year-long series “California Families Struggle to Learn,” on how families are coping with distance learning, we asked families for their bright spots: What’s helping them survive this most challenging of school years?